These links are for web sites with information on fairy shrimp, their habitats, or other macroscopic pond animals. These links worked as of January 8, 2023 or when added later but I do not intend to monitor them. Some of them have changed within the past year and that is not a good sign. If you encounter a link that doesn’t work, please send an email to hiker@fairyshrimpchronicles.net.
www.abdn.ac.uk/geosciences/departments/geology/the-learning-resource-1883.php
This web site by the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, has information on what life was like for branchiopods related to fairy shrimp (Anostraca) 400 million years ago as well as for other animals, plants, and fungi. The details have been preserved in the Rhynie Chert.
vernalpool.org
Kenney, L.P., and Burne, M.R., 2000, A Field Guide to the animals of Vernal Pools: Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, 80 p.
The guide has good photographs and short descriptions, is comprehensive, and has an index. The field guide can be downloaded. The web site has some additional photographs.
inaturalist.ca
Javascript for inaturalist.ca and inaturalist.org must be enabled to view the web site. Click on “Explore” in the header bar menu and type in an order, family, genus, or species name in the search box on the Explore page. The direct link to Anostraca is:
inaturalist.ca/observations?place_id=6712&taxon_id=119123 (the site has apparently been updated in the past few months and this link only works now when javascript is allowed for googleanalytics.com, googletagmanager.com, and google.com).
Or, click on “More” in the header bar menu, select “Taxa info”, and then type “branchiopod” in the search box after the page loads. The “List” tab at upper right seems to offer more than the default “Grid” tab.
This web site has compiled observations in Canada by the public and gives a photograph of the animal or the habitat observed but has no descriptions. If known, the genus or species is stated but these aren’t convincing without descriptions of microscopic observations. The locations of some observations are given on an embedded Google map (javascript for google.com, etc., must be enabled). It has over 100 observations of Anostraca and a few for Notostraca and Spinicaudata.
There are inaturalist web sites for other countries that may be similar to this one.
bugguide.net/node/view/350300
The above link opens the page for Branchiopoda. Click on one of the thumbnails for more photographs and information. This is a web site hosted by Iowa State University, Department of Plant Pathology, Entomology, and Microbiology, and I presume most of the contributors are students. Contributions are not limited to, or even dominated by, animals observed in Iowa. I haven’t figured out how this web site is organized but it seems that clicking on the “Info” tab sometimes results in descriptive information being displayed below the thumbnails. The “Images” tab is for a gallery of photographs with thumbnails that lead to a larger size image but the scope of the gallery is unclear. The “Data” tab has information on the states where the taxonomic unit has been observed and the months when it was observed. The contributor and date of contribution are on the page with the larger size image, which may also have one or more of the following: species name, county-level location (all in U.S.), collection date, and size of the animal.
As the web site name suggests, it also has images and information on various aquatic insects, such as Notonectidae (backswimmers) and Dytiscidae (predacious diving beetles).
fieldguide.mt.gov/displayOrders.aspx?class=Branchiopoda
This is part of “Montana’s Official State Website” and other field guides include plants and lichens. Click on a link to one of the orders and then to one of the families to get to links to individual species. The species pages generally have 1 or no images per species (enable javascript for mt.gov to see the image). These are publicly available photographs that may have nothing to do with Montana. There is essentially no descriptive information. The only thing that makes this web site useful is the observation records, which are limited to Montana. The number of observations is given and the locations of observations are shown on a very small scale map with boxes that are smaller than counties. In addition, there may be graphs of the months of observations, the years of observations, and the elevations of observations. It won’t help you find a pond but it could tell you what has been found nearby.
Oddly, the Anostracan families are listed as “(Artemiidae)”, “(Thamnocephalidae)”, “Branchinectid Brine Shrimp”, “Chirocephalid Brine Shrimp”, and “Streptocephalid Brine Shrimp”. I haven’t read of anyone else referring to Branchinectidae, Chirocephalidae, or Streptocephalidae as brine shrimp and most of the respective species do not live in high-TDS water.
Aquatic insects are included in the field guide. However, searching by family name didn’t work. I somehow found 2 backswimmer species but there is no information on either. There are over a dozen species of dytiscids and at least some have observation data.
mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide
This web site does not have fairy shrimp but maybe Missouri will add them some day. The field guide is a collection of web pages for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Scroll down and click on the link to “Aquatic Invertebrates” or go directly to
mdc.mo.gov/field-guide/search?fgSpeciesType=1001
Instead of scrolling through over a dozen pages, type clam shrimp in the search box and then click on the link to clam shrimp in the result. There is 1 photograph in the “Media Gallery” and a 1-paragraph description of clam shrimp. To see the information given for the subheadings, enable javascript for mo.gov.
Mollusks and crayfish seem to dominate the listings for aquatic invertebrates but there is information for some insect families like backswimmers (Notonectidae) and predacious diving beetles (Dytiscidae). I didn’t find anything for fairy shrimp (Anostraca) or tadpole shrimp (Notostraca).
le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/HB0137.html
H.B. 137 designates “Artemia franciscana, or brine shrimp” as Utah’s state crustacean. Javascript for utah.gov and ajax.googleapis.com must be enabled in order to see the text of the bill, which has nothing but a list of state symbols. A. franciscana becomes the 35th state symbol. The bill was signed by the governor on March 17, 2023.
According to some news sources (e.g., www.abc4.com/news/local-news/brine-shrimp-bill-advances-with-help-from-emerson-elementary-students/), 6th graders of Emerson Elementary School in Salt Lake City played a pivotal role in getting the legislation signed. You can read their petition at www.change.org/p/brine-shrimp-should-be-the-official-utah-state-crustacean.
More relevant to this web site, “Great Salt Lake” would be a great place to find anostracans, except in winter, if large parts of the shoreline are public lands. Due to the shoreline changing with river inflows, getting to the water could be tricky. I don’t know to what extent commercial operations impede, restrict, or facilitate public access.
www.parks.ca.gov/pages/514/files/MonoLakeFinalWebLayout2018.pdf
The brochure for California’s Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve is obviously focused on the photogenic tufa formations but it does have a paragraph on Artemia monica. The map with land ownership and roads will help you find a way to the water. California charges separate fees at the South Beach and Old Marina parking lots, which is inconvenient, to say the least.
The non-paved road from the Old Marina to South Beach is in good shape but the ford of Lee Vining Creek poses a serious hazard. It may be passable to high-clearance, 4-wheel drive vehicles from late summer to winter but probably not in spring and early summer, depending on creek diversions to Los Angeles. The road is probably not plowed in winter.
I recommend avoiding the “4WD Road” around the eastern shore of the lake unless you and your vehicle have successfully navigated long sections of deep sand before. I drove it once and will never try it again.
The Inyo National Forest manages the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area but none of the links in the search results I got with “www.fs.usda.gov” in the URL worked.